July 9, 2024
Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you, Acting Under-Secretary-General Msuya for your informative briefing. I also thank, Director-General Zhovnir for your briefing and for your courage and for continuing to show up for your patients, even in the direst circumstances. I welcome the participation of Poland, the EU, and particularly Ukraine to this meeting.
Colleagues, I’ll cut to the chase. We are here today because Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council, the current rotational president of the Security Council, attacked a children’s hospital.
Even uttering that phrase sends a chill down my spine: Russia attacked a children’s hospital, in broad daylight killing and injuring children. Chilling.
Colleagues, on Monday morning, Russian missiles smashed into civilian targets, including Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital: the largest pediatric facility in Ukraine, and a lifeline for the country’s most vulnerable.
In the hours since, we have seen images of children, bloodied and injured, escaping the damage. Of cancer patients, just a few years old, hooked up to IV drips, huddled outside the hospital’s bombed-out cancer wing.
We have heard the courageous stories of doctors and nurses scrambling to evacuate sick children, many of whom are intubated and on ventilators, to safety. Of members of the community heroically sifting through the rubble, in hopes of finding survivors, of not adding another number to the rising death toll.
Director-General Zhovnir has just enhanced our understanding of the impact of this on the 600 patients plus staff in the hospital including those who were in surgery.
Our hearts are with all of those who have lost loved ones, who wonder how their children can get the medicine and the care that they need, who wake up this morning worried about their home, their business, their family will be the next one destroyed by a Russian strike.
Because let’s be clear: this brutal attack is hardly a standalone incident. In March 2022, Russian air strikes damaged a maternity and children’s hospital in Mariupol. In December 2023, a Russian missile plunged into a medical facility in Dnipro.
And I could go on, but the fact is that, across the country, hundreds of children have been killed; thousands have been wounded; and millions have been displaced from their homes, as Russia continues its campaign of terror in Ukraine.
And then there are those children Russia has deported or forcibly transferred, robbing Ukrainian youth of not only their futures, but their very identities.
Colleagues, when Putin announced his so-called “peace plan” last month, I called it what it was: an outrageous attempt to force Ukraine to accept an unjust peace, while facing the barrel of a gun.
As if there was any doubt that this was the case, yesterday’s attack makes abundantly clear: Putin is not interested in peace. He is committed to wreaking death and destruction in pursuit of his war of aggression.
And of course, Putin hasn’t just attacked hospitals. Russia has upped its coordinated attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, taking out over half of the country’s power generation. Power plants in Kharkiv are operating at severely reduced capacity due to nearly daily attacks. Tens of thousands have had to evacuate. This is a deliberate and cruel effort to leave millions of Ukrainians without heat this winter.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Russia started this war. And Russia could end it at any time. As my colleague from France stated, “Russia cannot win this war.”
It could choose to withdraw its forces from Ukraine, and end the assault on hospitals and power plants. It could halt its campaign of torture and deportation, its pattern of violating international law. It could heed the will of over 140 countries who have repeatedly called for this madness to stop.
Until that day, and until the victims of these atrocities have gotten the accountability and justice they deserve, the United States will stand with Ukraine. We will stand with Ukraine in its efforts to defend its borders and we will stand with Ukraine here in this Council.
As laid out in last month’s Ukraine Peace Summit in Switzerland, we will support Ukraine’s right to self-defense, and invest in the country’s recovery, reconstruction, reform, and modernization. And we will uphold the principles of the UN Charter, including respect for sovereignty, political independence, and territorial integrity.
We encourage every member of this Council, and every corner of the international community, to do exactly same. Thank you.